Secret of the Golden Flower

[deci belle]

Yes, and I love Longchenpa's references to the pristine self-refreshing natural mind!!❤

 

Oh, and might as well put a plug in for Bankei Yotaku's (1622~1693) The Unborn, translated by Norman Waddell. ISBN 0-86547-153-3

 

It's just plain language for everyday ordinary people!

 

 

[itsuzan]: Is it helpful for students to look through the Buddhist sutras and Zen records?

 

Bankei: There's a time for reading the Zen records. If you read them or the sutras while you're still seeking the meaning contained in them, you'll only blind yourself. When you read them after having transcended that meaning, they become proof of your attainment.

 

 

I always try to remind people that the contents of the classics were left by enlightening beings. Therefore it is not in seeking intellectual understanding because the eye of authentic teaching is just inconceivability— THIS IS THE BASIS AND THE TRANSMISSION OF AUTHENTIC TEACHING.

 

I myself do not understand a thing. I only recognize reality by seeing through phenomena without denying characteristics in order to adapt impersonally to everyday ordinary circumstances, which is the working definition of turning the light around.

 

One does not avoid anything, only picking out the real from the false. One simply does not use what is seen; whereas ordinary people more or less speculate on circumstances. Having no calculations based on unconsciously projected outcomes, there are still consequences, so one matches creation's chaos with one's potential of innocent non-being awareness because that is all enlightening being has invested. That's why it's called selfless. There is not a shred of conventional morality implied.

 

Reality isn't events, much less a single person; the real is just the pervading light of awareness without origination or location or object or cause.

 

Going along you see illusion, live and breath illusion, create illusion, absorb illusion because that's what you are through and through in terms of going along. Going in reverse, you just see the unborn, live in the uncreated and absorb the pristine, nonoriginated living aware potential because that is what you are in terms of reversal.

 

Before realization, you chop wood and carry water. After realization you chop wood and carry water. Dogen said "people become buddhas and buddhas become people".

 

 

 

 

 

ed note: add everything below the first sentence

Edited December 27, 2012 by deci belle

[Owledge]

What experiences have you all had with this method, and which translation do you think is best? I have both Wilhelm and Cleary, but I think I heard there's an Eva Wong version too.

You can read Cleary; you can read Wilhelm. Neither of those translations is wong. The former is written somewhat more cleary, the latter is richard in meaning.

 

Personally I prefer the Pun version.

(Not that I'm a punvert!)

Edited December 28, 2012 by Owledge

[Owledge]

I read through the sections both Wilhelm and Cleary in the same time period to contrast the meanings presented in each and found this to be a great method to better understand the text. If you intend to use this as a guide for meditation praxis I would recommend steering more toward the Cleary translation though. There were elements of the Wilhelm translation that appear, according to multiple sources I encountered and my own experience, to be a bit misguiding. I have a few notes of slightly greater detail regarding this in my ppd for anyone who is interested.

OK, on a serious note...

1) What do you mean by "misguiding"?

2) Can you briefly explain how you can come to the conclusion of parts of the Wilhelm translation being misguiding? (I'd assume the Chinese version has to serve as reference, including a good understanding of the language in all its facets, subtleties and implications. After all, that's what people say about Richard Wilhelm.)

3) Are you well-versed in the German language? I have to assume, since you directly compared Cleary and Wilhelm version, and imagining the alternative - comparing the Cleary version to a Wilhelm version that was translated from German to English - would just be hilariously twisted.

Edited December 28, 2012 by Owledge

[deci belle]

viator said:

more appropriate for someone looking to use the work with their meditation.

Italics mine.

 

If you are doing things that result in any bodily effects, it is obvious this is energy work. This is external. How is this any different than any of the other countless distillations of energetics occurring in terms of yogic application?

 

On page 66 of the last section of Cleary's volume called "Questions and answers Opening up the Mysteries of the Doctrine of the Golden Flower":

When you observe mind and become aware of openness, thereby you produce its vitality. When its vitality stabilizes, it becomes manifest, and you see the opening of the mysterious pass.

 

Gazing at the lower abdomen is external work. As for the inner work, when the mind-eye comes into being, that alone is the true "elixir field".

 

The light you see before your eyes is rat-light, not the light of the tiger-eye or dragon-vitality. The light of the mind does not belong to inside or outside; if you look to see it with the physical eyes, that is bedevilment.

 

You have been affected by pollution for so long that it is impossible to become clear all at once. In truth, the matter of life and death is important: once you turn the light around and recollect the vital spirit to shine stably, then your own mind is the lamp of enlightenment.

 

Does this sound like energy work?

 

Everyone already has the lamp of mind, but it is necessary to light it so it shines; then this is immortality.

 

Don't let yourselves forget the mind and allow the spirit to be obscured. If you have no autonomy, your vital spirit diffuses.

 

Forms are all conditioned. Cognition is a function of mind, empty silence is the substance of mind. If you fix the mind on anything conditioned, then temperament is in control, so you cannot govern it completely or comprehend it thoroughly.

 

The minor technique of circulating energy can enhance the body so as to extend the life span, but if you therefore suppose that the great way requires work on the physical body, this is a tangential teaching.

 

External work has no connection to the great way. The true practice of the great Way first requires that vitality be transformed into energy. As alchemical literature has clearly explained, this vitality is not sexual.

 

Now, does this passage appear in the Wilhelm version? I don't think so.❤

 

Fixing your attention on anything created is error. Do you know anything uncreated to fix your mind on? What is uncreated is mind itself. This is your own everyday mind before the first thought.

 

Is it still unclear as to the eye of the Golden Flower teaching having nothing to do with energy work?

 

As for sitting meditation, this is only a temporary expedient, not a pastime to be considered practice.

 

Furthermore, where is it mentioned that the fruition of the Golden Flower practice is accomplished in terms of sitting meditation? ULTIMATELY, THIS IS NOT CARRIED OUT IN SITTING MEDITATION. This is a living application of the Way carried out in public in everyday ordinary situations— not in wimpy pusillanimous temperature-controlled sitting-rooms protected from drafts and unsightly real-life conditions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ed note: spell "thoroughly" correctly in 9th paragraph; add 12th paragraph

Edited December 28, 2012 by deci belle

[tccii]

Thank a lot tccii.

 

The first link has about 7 chapters before the main chapters start. Is the 360doc.com link the "trucated version" which Cleary says Wilhelm translated? Do you know of any historical reasons why the first link has these 7 additional chapters?

 

thanks again.

 

 

Happy Christmas all

 

They both have 13 chapters. The first link has a series of prefaces.

 

IIRC the Wilhelm translation was not done form a "truncated" text. I believe he states somewhere in his book that he dropped the last few chapters since he thought them redundant.

[Harmonious Emptiness]

They both have 13 chapters. The first link has a series of prefaces.

 

IIRC the Wilhelm translation was not done form a "truncated" text. I believe he states somewhere in his book that he dropped the last few chapters since he thought them redundant.

 

Thanks for the clarification tccii. My translation process is still very very slow. Any idea when those prefaces were written or by whom?

 

thanks

[Harmonious Emptiness]

By the way, there is mention of sitting practice at the end of chapter 9. Though I can agree that ultimately the discipline of this liberation is total, and not limited to a particular daily event.

[Owledge]

@viator

OK, so it was a twice-translated version. I don't know whether translators between English and German take more care than they do in fictional works, but there it's kinda horrible; translators twisting the writing into their own personal style and interpretation. So one should not attribute an English Wilhelm version solely to Richard Wilhelm - the same way that I wouldn't judge an actor's performance in a movie by the German dubbed version of that movie.

 

A personal conclusion after some observation in this area is that a 2nd level translator should not do a wannabe-accurate translation without consulting the original author. Most translation jobs are probably done in an autonomous way without asking the author for the meaning of certain passages where several different translations are possible. Instead they solely rely on their personal competence and confidence, which could be called lacking selflessness. (Of couse only in cases where the author could have been contacted about this.)

Edited December 28, 2012 by Owledge

[tccii]

Thanks for the clarification tccii. My translation process is still very very slow. Any idea when those prefaces were written or by whom?

 

thanks

 

They are attributed to various Nei Dan luminaries such as the patriarchs of the Bei Pai and others. This is obviously problematic from a historical standpoint. Issues related to dating are best addressed by those with specialized training in the area of textual analysis. Understanding the historical and textual tradition of a classic is one reason the work of scholars in this area is important. It would be great to see a new, critical translation of this classic by someone like Fabrizio Pregadio or one of his peers in the Taoist Studies field.

 

For those who are interested, Pregadio comments on the important of both scholarly and practitioner based approaches to understanding these traditions in an interview we did with him. Here is an earlier post on this forum with excerpts and comments:

http://thetaobums.co...rizio +pregadio

Edited December 30, 2012 by tccii

[Harmonious Emptiness]

Yes, his translation would be interesting, especially with these commentaries included. From what I could see comparing Wilhelm and Cleary translations with some of the original, there was not such a drastic difference between the two, aside from Cleary's extensive footnotes and the fact that Cleary's use of vocabulary seems to speak a bit clearer for modern English.

 

A bit off topic, but I would love to see more of the Liu I Ming writings translated, such as his commentary on the Dao De Jing. Just my two cents, fwiw.

 

thanks again

[deci belle]

Oh no! It is not incompatible with sitting practice at all~ to my understanding it starts out at this level precisely because it is a temporary expedient! It then does move on to using the same criteria on more and more subtle levels.

 

There are many who have no intention of recognizing the evolutionary aspect of this "all at once" teaching dealing directly with open clarity from the very start. This is what is the best part of the teaching and is specifically described as such in the text at the beginning of the of the book.

 

I was afraid I might have been misunderstood as being militant about it (having quoted that small part from your post), but it is only that there are those who are complacent to limit their practice to energy-work and fail to make inroads in terms of mind-only discipline alongside energetics~ gradually shifting one's emphasis, because…

 

(I lifted this from a post about Liu I-Ming that also adresses HE's and tccii's dialogue)

Liu I-Ming is wonderful in that his comprehension is impeccable and he does not suffer from the sicknesses of attachment to teachers, teachings and traditions yet being well-grounded in them all. He also seems to to be free of attachments to energy-work in all its guises.

 

I wish I could say the same for some of the bums.

 

I understand its allure, and understand that one might be willing to settle for second-best in that regard, but in working with the conditional, one is guaranteed to be bound by it. The subtle body has no affinity with the absolute. Only your own everyday ordinary mind has this inherent affinity with the uncreate because it already is the uncreate, albeit deluded by an overlay of habitually conditioned human intellectual identity-reflective cognitive processes bundled up as "ego" which is perpetuated by a beginningless stream of unconscious psychological content constantly coming from and returning to nowhere.

 

Whereas if one can take the forward step and enter the unconditional directly and develop a practice based on the unattributable primal aware nature, one can be assured that all the subtle-body shenanigans that those who settle for less work for will and do manifest spontaneously without the slightest intention or effort.

 

How cool is that?